I didn’t refer to cosmic rays. If you read my posts you will see I was referring to the earth’s surface. A portion of the earth’s surface comes from igneous rock.
There is a finite amount of unstable isotopes on the earth’s surface. There would even be less in a situation where it decayed rapidly. This concept that faster decay would be a health hazard would apply to today where there’s a huge build up of slowly decaying parent isotopes.
But in a situation where the build up never occurs due to everything decaying quickly, in that situation there would be no health hazard. In fact it’s healthier to have a little more radiation than we get now, before it reaches dangerous levels.
If everything was decaying quickly in the past why do we only find naturally occurring radioactive isotopes with half-lives greater than the age of the earth?
I’m sorry @Mindspawn, but you’re getting things the wrong way round here.
The amount of unstable isotopes on the earth’s surface is not just finite; it is known. So too is the amount of decay product from those isotopes. The amount of build up is a fixed quantity in our equation. It is exactly the same no matter what historical decay rates have been. It is fixed because it is what gets measured directly to begin with. It has occurred, period.
Seriously, this is the most fundamental rule of measurement that there is. The quantities that you measure do not depend on quantities that you don’t. On the contrary, it’s the other way round.
Now the total amount of nuclear decay that has taken place over time is going to be proportional to the amount of build up. When one atom of uranium decays to lead, it emits a fixed amount of radiation (eight alpha particles and six beta particles for 238U, or seven alpha particles and four beta particles for 235U). So the total amount of radiation that has been released altogether since a rock was formed is also a fixed, known quantity.
Doubling historic rates will not change the amount of buildup, because that is fixed. It will not change the total amount of radiation, because that too is fixed. But it will halve the time taken to reach that buildup and therefore it will double the amount of radiation per unit time. This is because radiation per unit time equals radiation divided by time.
And as I said, we are not talking about just doubling the amount of radiation per unit time. We are talking about multiplying it by a factor of a million. Which, as I said, brings us up to ten sieverts per day, or a lethal dose of radiation in just 19.2 hours.
Well my point is that the half lives would be exaggerated now, if decay was faster in the past. For example what if muons cause background radiation which slows decay, but in the past they were blocked from the earth’s surface through higher air pressures before the End Permian?
We would then be applying slow current decay rates to parent/daughter ratios that were decayed over thousands and not millions of years.
Sure there are known quantities of unstable isotopes, but that quantity would have been lower in historical conditions if decay was faster.
Now if we apply currently observed rates of decay to parent/daughter ratios of fossilized rock in fast decaying conditions, this would completely distort our estimate of the age of the rock sample.
A) I’m not a young earther
B) it’s easy to misunderstand varves caused by each rainfall, as annual varves. That error is obvious, and that type of error is also applied to layers of snow and ice which are obviously created with each snowfall.
Same error with dendrochronology. In very dry areas, especially relating to bristlecone pines, the trees have a visible growth spurt with every rainfall. If you think about it carefully, that is obviously what will occur when the soil is largely devoid of moisture. In wetter areas, the growth spurts relate to the more general trend of seasonal moisture of the soil.
I’ve read those studies about Japanese varves many times in the past, it always strikes me how easily the facts can be misinterpreted when one is desperately looking for confirmation of one’s theory.
That river has a small catchment area, river flows would vary according to each rainfall, compared to large catchment areas where river flows are largely dependent on seasons.
Lake Suigetsu is the very opposite location one would look to get clear seasonal flows. Nearly every OTHER river on earth flowing into a lake would be more suitable, why didn’t they just get varves from normal rivers with obvious annual flows. Why use these unique locations that have misinterpreted data, when you can easily find perfect locations everywhere which represent true seasonal varves. Interesting that.
The scary fact, is that they are actually using this lake, which reflects rainfall varves and not seasonal varves, to calibrate carbon dating.
Then some will claim that multiple methods confirm dates, not realizing that one method is calibrated from another faulty method. The confirmation bias is truly shocking.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
80
OK. There are different, irreconcilable epistemologies. I was a fundamentalist for 40 years. All but YEC initially at 15, which damaged my education and development. Without realising it still for the latter 10-15 of that in some regards. I still had a side bet on Eden alongside evolution. The final Jenga pile brick was removed at the Musée d’Angoulême ten years ago. Humans are ancient. I’ve never questioned radiometry and other dating techniques however, due to a science education and cannot start now as the process of deconstructing fundamentalism and not being able to reconstruct anything literal at all is complete. We are where we are in every sense and can only reconcile in some higher metanarrative.
I personally simply believe fully in a literal Genesis 1, but correctly interpreted according to the Hebrew. Not according to YEC misinterpretation of Genesis 1. And I believe fully in science too. But correctly interpreted science, without evolutionary assumptions. I’ve yet to see a contradiction between correctly interpreted Bible verses, and correctly interpreted science.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
82
Aye Mindspawn. Wade isn’t it? We have different correct interpretation narratives of the Bible and science narratives. That’s OK.
Please try to learn a little more about varves as your presently understanding is incorrect in every way with your logic being the opposite of that of scientists who don’t just make things up but take extremely careful, detailed measurements of such lakes.